The Headsman eBook

The struggle between the two bodies of air ceased,
that on the surface of the lake yielding to the avalanche
from above, and the tempest came howling upon the
bark.

Chapter VII.

—–­and
now the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with their mountain-mirth.

Byron.

It is necessary to recapitulate a little, in order
to connect events. The signs of the hour had
been gradually but progressively increasing. While
the lake was unruffled, a stillness so profound prevailed,
that sounds from the distant port, such as the heavy
fall of an oar, or a laugh from the waterman, had
reached the ears of those in the Winkelried, bringing
with them the feeling of security, and the strong charm
of a calm at even. To these succeeded the gathering
in the heavens, and the roaring of the winds, as they
came rushing down the sides of the Alps, in their first
descent into the basin of the Leman. As the sight
grew useless, except as it might study the dark omens
of the impending vault, the sense of hearing became
doubly acute, and it had been a powerful agent in heightening
the vague but acute apprehensions of the travellers.
The rushes of the wind, which at first were broken,
at intervals resembling the roar of a chimney-top
in a gale, had soon reached the fearful grandeur of
those aerial wheelings of squadrons, to which we have
more than once alluded, passing off in dread mutterings,
that, in the deep quiet of all other things, bore
a close affinity to the rumbling of a surf upon the
sea-shore. The surface of the lake was first broken
after one of these symptoms, and it was this infallible
sign of a gale which had assured Maso there was no
time to lose. This movement of the element in
a calm is a common phenomenon on waters that are much
environed with elevated and irregular head-lands,
and it is a certain proof that wind is on some distant
portion of the sheet. It occurs frequently on
the ocean, too, where the mariner is accustomed to
find a heavy sea setting in one direction, the effects
of some distant storm, while the breeze around him
is blowing in its opposite. It had been succeeded
by the single rolling swell, like the outer circle
of waves produced by dropping a stone into the water,
and the regular and increasing agitation of the lake,
until the element broke as in a tempest, and that
seemingly of its own volition, since not a breath
of air was stirring. This last and formidable
symptom of the force of the coming gust, however,
had now become so unequivocal, that, at the moment
when the three travellers and the patron fell from
her gangway, the Winkelried, to use a seaman’s
phrase, was literally wallowing in the troughs of
the seas.